Re: [GNUnet-developers] copyright assignment

[Ludovic Courtès]

Christian Grothoff <address@hidden> skribis:

> On 12/29/2015 12:14 PM, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>> Christian Grothoff <address@hidden> skribis:
>> 
>>> The reason is that situations continue to pop up where the ability to
>>> dual-license some code would be helpful for the project (similar to how
>>> we added GPL+eCos to GNU libmicrohttpd in the past).  If we had the
>>> copyright with GNUnet e.V., then at least we had a relatively small
>>> group (the annually elected "Vorstand") representing the developers in a
>>> position of making decisions about dual-licensing.
>> 
>> I’m guessing the second license would necessarily be more permissive
>> than the GPL, no?  Wouldn’t this amount to effectively relicensing
>> everything under a permissive license?
>
> It would not necessarily be more permissive.

What I mean is that for a stronger copyleft such as AGPL or a
hypothetical GPLv4, nothing special is needed since the license already
permits such “upgrades.”  The only thing is doesn’t permit is the other
direction.

> For example, I have in the past had cases where people asked for a
> commercial license for GNU libmicrohttpd, which is already under
> LGPL. And that commercial license was with the clause that they'd
> share all the extensions they write under LGPL as well. So this was
> totally not rational, but the world simply isn't rational.

Hmm what was the “commercial license” then?  It doesn’t sound very
rational, indeed.  :-)

Cheers,
Ludo’.